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May 5, 2025
SHAWANO – On a mission to increase access to behavioral health care, STRIVE Behavioral Solutions recently celebrated the groundbreaking of what’s soon to become its new, permanent home in Northeast Wisconsin.
Starting the business all on her own, Kristin Floss – a University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and Chicago School of Professional Psychology graduate who later became a board-certified behavioral analyst – said she recognized the need for pediatric behavioral care in Shawano’s rural community.
“I (had) worked at different companies surrounding the Shawano area – (in) the larger cities (of) Green Bay, Wausau (and) Appleton – but I wanted to bring services to a rural community and help the families that weren’t able to access the treatment…they deserved,” she said.
Aside from the fact that she was living in the Shawano area at the time, Floss said she was also inspired to start her business in the small Wisconsin town because of its residing school districts.
“What differentiates me from other applied behavior analysis (ABA) companies is that we work with school districts,” she said. “So we have school district contracts for the clients that will come to our center for school services. We also go into the school setting if it’s applicable, or better for that child, and provide services there or just consult with the other IEP teams or the school.”
Serving families and children with various behavioral challenges – such as autism, ADHD, ODD, communicative disorders, social skill deficits and more – Floss said it is her passion, and mission through STRIVE, to work with school districts and “bridge the gap between ABA and education.”
New space, services, amenities
Since opening the business in 2020, Floss said STRIVE has only ever rented office locations.
“In September, I was just starting (to ramp) up doing assessments in the home while I was working on getting a building,” she said. “We opened our building for clients to come (in) December 2020. We are still in the same building and have outgrown it – like two years ago, we were busting at the seams. We have a pretty long waitlist, and in order for us to continue to get some movement on that waitlist, we needed a bigger space.”
The issue of its long waitlists, Floss said, is compounded by STRIVE’s need for additional providers.
“We do one-on-one treatment primarily, so for every child here, let’s say, for 20 hours, we need (to be staffed) for 20 hours,” she said. “Then we need (to hire) higher-level clinicians with the board certification to be able to manage those cases.”
Floss said not only did she realize STRIVE needed a bigger space, but that in order to provide her clients with a facility that met their needs, she would have to construct a new building.
“We chose to build and have it be exactly what we need – structured exactly how we want for the individuals we service,” she said.
Another goal with STRIVE’s new space, Floss said, is to expand the types of services she offers.
“My big goal, (with STRIVE, is to make it) more of a multi-disciplinary practice,” she said. “I want to offer speech (therapy), occupational therapy (OT), physical therapy (PT), counseling even – and that’s really not common in our state for ABA.”
Floss said there are practices in other areas outside of Wisconsin that offer the type of “well-rounded, comprehensive treatment” she’s looking to provide at STRIVE.
“We, right now, can consult with OT if they’re already working with (our client),” she said. “So we’ve had clients that go to CP centers for speech (therapy) or OT, and we can collaborate with them, but being able to have them on staff, contracted for STRIVE, would really amp up the client’s treatment.”
Wanting to expand STRIVE’s services, Floss said, is one of the reasons why she decided to jump from a 5,000-square-foot space to building a nearly 12,000-square-foot facility.
The increased space, she said, will provide even more children, schools and families access to ABA care, closer to home – as the only other ABA center near Shawano, she said, is roughly “30-40 miles away.”
When completed, Floss said the larger STRIVE facility will also feature new amenities such as:
- A large sensory gym with a trampoline for kids to run and get their energy out
- Areas that imitate traditional classroom and school settings for children who may struggle being in those environments
- Offices for employee supervisors
- A large and comfortable staff break room
The property, Floss said, also has room for a future addition, thanks to a four-acre parcel that the City of Shawano “essentially gifted” STRIVE.
An unplanned second location
Just prior to starting her business, Floss said she worked for an ABA center in Wausau, where she developed connections with other behavioral professionals who later came to work for her in Shawano.
After opening her first STRIVE location, Floss said she began “receiving some interest from caseworkers and other professionals in Marathon County (who would ask), ‘Are you ever going to service this area?’”
“Those staff (from Wausau) that were with me since day one and that are ready to start families (said), ‘Let’s expand up to Wausau,’” she said.
Though a second location – let alone one in an entirely different region of the state – wasn’t in her “five-year plan,” Floss said she recognized the opportunity to not only bring the vital services STRIVE offers to the North Central region, but to help her employees further their careers as well.
“With our growth, I had a lot of clinicians – so, master’s level (positions) – and I wanted to be able to advance them in their careers,” she said. “So I decided to open up in (the) Wausau (area).”
In 2022, Floss said STRIVE officially opened its second location, this time in Schofield – and though operating two locations has been stressful, she added that “it’s really been a blessing to be able to provide services there, too.”
“It is a bigger community, and they have some other agencies there where children can access care,” she said, “but (with) how we do business, and how our clinicians stand out from others, it’s been really cool to connect with the school districts up there and form relationships there, too.”
Between her two locations, Floss said STRIVE employs roughly 39 employees, ranging from entry-level behavioral technicians to board-certified behavioral analysts – such as herself – as well as STRIVE’s treatment therapists and administrative team.
Value-driven care
Floss said because she started her career as a clinician before moving into business ownership, her biggest “why” for starting STRIVE was to provide ethical, client-focused treatment.
Having worked for other ABA and behavioral centers at the beginning of her career, Floss said she wanted to ensure STRIVE’s clients felt and understood that they were not just a bill to be collected.
Deciding to create the change she wanted to see herself, Floss said she stepped out on her own so she could utilize her “strong passion for people (to) accept any client that needs these services, as deemed medically necessary by insurance, and not look at them as a number.”
To ensure her values carry through every STRIVE employee, Floss said she instills the importance of ethical care into her leadership team.
“We all have that same mentality of (putting the) client first,” she said.
Another strong value Floss said she’s instilled at STRIVE is employee satisfaction – something she adds is especially important in their line of work.
“Employee satisfaction is huge for me,” she said. “It’s very hard because you can’t please everybody, but if you take care of your people, they’ll take care of your clients and the kids you work with.”
STRIVE’s new Shawano facility, Floss said, will create additional employment opportunities for local behavioral professionals as well – which she said is crucial to the new educational placement model she’s currently working on.
“With a larger facility, we’re going to be working on re-shaping our school placement model to allow for quicker turnover to get the students the care they need,” she said. “And then, as well, opening up space for us to hire more employees and get these kids (seen) quicker, because right now we’ve hit max capacity. So it’s not like we can continue to hire either.”
A completion date on the facility is not yet known.
For more information on STRIVE Behavioral Solutions, visit strivebehavioralsolutions.com.
